Random Crap

* First off, you all realize that if Saddam is in fact dead, we’re six weeks away from the End of the World. Please refer to the seminal film South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut for all the details. The truly ironic thing about this is that relations between the US and Canada at the moment are very nearly as bad as they are in that film, not in the least because Canada actually hasn’t repeatedly apologized for Bryan Adams.

* Got word from Tor today that Old Man’s War has been slotted into a May 2004 release, slightly later than the late 2003/early 2004 release Tor had been mulling over. I’ll need to go through the site and update references, but for now, you’ve heard it here first. I’m not known as being the world’s most patient man, but I’m actually pretty good with this release date, since previously there’s was a chance that OMW and The Book of the Dumb would be released right on top of each other. That would have been no good because I can’t reasonably expect people to buy two books of mine in the same month, no matter how much guilt I apply. However, now they’ll be six months apart — more than enough time for people to have save up their pennies once more. Everybody wins!

* The Movable Type – increased readership thing is definitely confirmed — I’m now operating at double the unique visits per day than I got pre-MT even on weekdays, which is pretty neat (and doesn’t even count the RSS feed access). I wonder if other people who switch over to MT have noticed a similar bump in traffic with a switchover.

On the flip side of this, the amount of spam I get also seems to have doubled in the last couple of weeks as well — about 250 pieces of junk mail daily on my spam trap accounts and another 50 or daily on my main account. Yes, I actually get 300 pieces of spam a day. And yet, I still don’t want to buy a Dale Earnhardt commemorative wrench set! I wonder if people also have noticed a corresponding spam increase after they switch.

Back to work. Done with Scandalous Women, now I’m onto Inventors of Fads. Yes, it is a truly random life I lead, thanks for asking.